My bicycle has been causing me to lose face. When the pedal fell off as I was riding, I repaired it. When the chain fell off as I was riding, I repaired it. But when the brake came off in my hand as I was trying to stop, I decided it was the last straw. Tomorrow I am going to march into the bike rental shop of my university and give them a piece of my mind (or more likely just cower behind Xiao Zhou).

Riding through traffic in Chinese rush hour is a nightmare. Really, I think I would rather someone just chop me up and feed me to the poor. Chinese drivers are mad in the most original sense of the word. If a police car pulls up to check out a crime scene (well, that’s an exaggeration of what Chinese policemen actually do), drivers will just honk at it to move out of the way. The bike lane is useless because taxis pull up out of nowhere and nearly throw you over your handlebars. And Chinese pedestrians just flop into the road like dead fish. Literally. I was once almost killed by a man who absentmindedly put a bucket of fish in the road as I was trying to pass.

Thank god we’re leaving for the countryside soon, because if I were in Kunming much longer I’d have to go into a home for frustrated bicyclers.

Beside my emerging issues with road rage, I really like my homestay. My family is very gracious and I feel bad that I can't do more to reciprocate their kind gestures. I've been so used to living on my own that my basic routine is wake, go to school, come home for lunch, go back to school, come home for dinner, work, sleep. But we have had a lot of chances to talk. If you had told me when I was a high school senior sitting through AP Spanish that I would soon find myself living with a Chinese family in an isolated province speaking their language, I never would have believed you.

the father in my house is gone because of the One Child Policy. He left shortly after Sophie was born, disappointed that she was a girl. Sophie is the smartest three-year-old I have ever met. How could that be a disappointment? But now it's as if her whole life is now a mission to prove her father wrong. The amount of resources Chinese parents pour into their only children is incredible. There are no cousin, uncles, or siblings anymore, just the relationship between the generations, which is fiercely tight. Sophie is lucky to have grandparents that take such good care of her while her mother works, taking her to English Corner every thursday night and buying all the educational toys and computer programs they can find, in hopes that she can carry on the family torch.

my grandfather is such a good cook. He's a Hui, a Chinese muslim, and he doesn't quite look Han. He seems to be mid-sixties, and you can still see that he was handsome. I admire how much energy he has. Today he cooked the eggplant dish I love so much, with tofu this time. It tastes like ginger and garlic. I want him to show me how to make it, but I'm afraid I won't remember.

I went to a Chinese zoo today. It made me want to cry. Everyone was in a pretty somber mood. Lions and tigers are stuck in cages and look like they have no more will to move.